When I woke on the morning of my third birthday, there was a string going out of my bedroom door. I followed it through our house, then down the path to our garden shed, through the door and there, with a big bow on it was A BRIGHT RED TRIKE. I was very excited.
That was on our farm in New Zealand in a small town called Kaikoura. Lots of people visit it now to go whale watching. But when I lived there with my mum and my grandparents, the whales had moved away. My Dad was overseas in the Airforce because of the Second World War, so I didn’t see him until I was nearly three.
When I was twelve we moved to a farm that was close to the sea so my sister and I started riding waves and messing about in boats. Sometimes we visited a lighthouse far out on an island. I love islands, so I did think about becoming a lighthouse keeper but instead I trained as a teacher. My first class was tiny: 13 to 15 children aged five to eight at a school called Duvauchelles, which was also near the sea.
I first came to England in 1966 where I married David who was born in Tasmania. We returned to New Zealand but in 1974 we decided to travel again with our two children, Joss and Kate.
